MISADVENTURES

Why does tea in Ireland taste so much better?  Maybe it’s the water. Maybe it’s psychological. Or maybe because it marks the end of a series of misadventures getting here.

Our journey began with arriving at the Langdale ferry terminal 40 minutes before departure and realizing I had forgotten my backpack – with my passport in it.  If we missed the ferry, it would be a 2-hour wait for the next one, so I called my friend Laurie who zipped over to our house and at the risk of speeding tickets, got it down to us in time to catch the boat! Phew – hero cookies due there – GF ones.  We got to our hotel in Vancouver without further incident.

It seemed Murphy wasn’t done with us though. We woke up to find out our flight was delayed an hour leaving Vancouver.  It would make the Toronto connection to Dublin tight, but it could be done. Except that the flight was delayed for 2 hours.  Upon boarding in Vancouver, we asked if they would be holding the plane in Toronto. They couldn’t tell us, but said we could (and should) monitor any changes on our Air Canada app.  Which you need wifi for. Yes, the plane has wifi – for a cost. Did you hear my eyes roll down the aisle?  While on the plane, our connection was cancelled and we were re-booked. We would miss the 10:00 a.m. bus connection from Dublin to Limerick.  Maureen in Ireland re-booked the bus for 6:00 p.m. When we got to Toronto, we found out that the original flight we had booked to Dublin departed 26 minutes early!  If it had waited, we and 12 others on the same flight would have made it.  We were not re-booked direct to Dublin as our original flight was. We were re-booked on a midnight flight through London Heathrow where we would have to make yet another connection to Dublin.  5-hour layover in Toronto. 1-hour layover in London. And the seats we paid for?  Nice try – we both got crammed into middle seats, four rows apart, for the 6.5 hour flight to London.  Well done, Scair Canada.  While I was busy whining and complaining about this, I thought of CK Louis' interview where he said "Everything's amazing, nobody's happy" and talked about how people complain about air travel.  "And then what happened? Did you fly through the air? Like a bird? You non-contributing zero?!"   

Yes we did. But I was still mad because after all, I booked my own flight, printed my own baggage tags, printed my own boarding pass, loaded my own bags onto the belt, then paid to monitor a flight change that they screwed up.  I did everything right and Air Canada did nothing right for the $$ I paid them. As I said to Peter, if I was 2 hours late for a meeting with clients and then proceeded to waste another 8 hours of their time, I wouldn't get paid.  I sure wouldn't get hired again. So I will be sending a snot-a-gram just to get it off my chest and maybe I will send along an invoice at my hourly rate for all of my time they wasted, just to make a point. They also need to know that the $15 each food voucher they gave us to make nice covers about a bottle of water and a bag of chips in airports these days.  Up your game, Air Canada.  A lounge pass with free food and drink might have put me in a more forgiving frame of mind.

We arrived in Heathrow and got over to the Aer Lingus terminal for the final leg to Dublin without any hiccups. We boarded on time and naively thought we might even make the 4:00 p.m. bus from Dublin. Then sat on the tarmac for 50 minutes past flight time. Oh well. Finally land in Dublin, gathered our baggage, had a bite to eat, and headed for the bus.  Ticket scan said we were booked for the 8:00 p.m. bus, despite Maureen having booked us on the 6:00 p.m.  Now I was starting to lose my cool – we’d been travelling for 25 hours with no sleep.  The bus was fully booked, but the driver said to wait out the load because sometimes there are no-shows and we might get on.  We did get on, and arrived in Limerick about 8:30 p.m. local time. So two things did go right – our luggage arrived in spite of 3 plane changes, and we were able to get on that 6:00 p.m. bus.  We were grateful to see Frank and Maureen there to pick us up!  Frank and Maureen’s place is lovely with a gorgeous view of the Irish countryside and Maureen fed us up and we had a good visit until we couldn’t stay awake any longer.

We woke to a lovely day - cool and fresh. Maureen made us breakfast and it was their turn to scramble around getting ready to go to the bus for the Dublin airport. We met their son, Barry, at the bus depot so we know who to call if we need anything at the house.  Maureen and Frank were boarded and we were left to get ourselves back. I drove and managed the left-hand shift and left side of the road without injury to car or husband. Peter played it cool, but I didn’t think to see if he had any jaw tension from clenched teeth when we arrived back at the house.  We’re just going to hang out at the house today, catch up on sleep, do our laundry, and decide what we want to do tomorrow.  You can see from the photos that the digs are just terrible – lovely view, lots of space, enclosed gazebo on the deck. We are suffering.  I was pretty sure Maureen would not want the leftover lemon cake to dry out, so I took on the tragic duty of ensuring that did not happen.  I think it must be nap time now. Better adventures soon to come.